📊 Introducing our 2025 Holiday Insights Report series!

This year's data reveals how holiday shopping has officially entered its "tariff era," where economic uncertainty is creating unprecedented behavioral shifts. Honestly, the findings were so surprising we couldn't fit them all in one report. So we're serving them up in three bite-sized sections: 😋

🔍 Part 1: The Discovery Revolution 

🤖 AI goes mainstream for gift discovery 

Adoption more than doubled among younger generations, with Gen X leading the charge at 188% growth

📱 Influencer recommendations drive purchases

Over half of consumers (51%) have bought items based on influencer content, with "top gift ideas" being the most influential type

🌐 Digital discovery overtakes tradition

Retailer websites now beat friends & family as the primary source for gift inspiration

Coming soon: The Shopping Evolution and The Spending Paradox

Or book a demo and unlock the full report right now!

🎰 It’s not too late to connect at Groceryshop!

Groceryshop is just days away, and we'd love to meet up in Vegas! We've got 4 fun ways to connect beyond the usual booth handshake.

🎁 Private Meeting → All attendees get a prize (up to $500 gift cards)

🍸 Happy Hour → Cocktails, networking & high roller giveaways

🥐 Breakfast Roundtable → Intimate insights, big ideas, zero fluff

🍽️ Private Dinners → 1:1 time with our leadership team

Because great conversations lead to bigger wins! 🚀

RSVP to an event or schedule a meeting

Not headed to Groceryshop? Let's connect somewhere else.

We're making the rounds this fall! We'll be at Advertising Week New York, ADWEEK Brandweek in Atlanta, and P2PI Live & Expo in Schaumburg between now and the end of the year.

Coffee? ☕ Cocktails? 🍸 Cookies? 🍪 

Let's meet up and chat about getting more of your products into carts!

See where we'll be →

🧠 Growth isn't a chart - it's a mindset

Let's talk about what doesn't show up on most feature checklists but powers every high-performing team we work with:

• A deeper understanding of what actually drives conversion
• The flexibility to act fast when shopper behavior shifts
• Tools that simplify (not just track) the eComm journey
• And a mindset that constantly asks: What else could we be doing?

That’s what we call the power of MORE, and our clients are living proof that it works.

This month, we’re unpacking a few small-but-mighty shifts that are helping brands convert more, adapt faster, and prepare for the biggest quarter of the year (hello, holiday! 🎁).

💥 What High-Performing Brands Are Doing Instead

These aren’t just features, they're strategies.

Here’s what smarter teams are leaning into:

🛒 Direct-to-Cart > PDP Hops

The best journeys are frictionless. Each intermediary step between intent and purchase loses around 80% of interested CPG shoppers, and sending them to a PDP opens up opportunities for competitive cross-selling.

📦 Bundles Drive Bigger Baskets

Bundling works, especially when it’s easy to launch and tied to shopper behavior. Multi-product ads typically result in 1.2–2x the CTR of single-product ads.

🔁 SmartSubstitution Keeps Carts Full

Out-of-stock ≠ lost sale – if you're ready for it. In the last 12 months, SmartSubstitution rolled to in-stock variants for OOS advertised products 27% of the time, saving over $2.2B in cartings for brands.

📍 Local Stock Awareness Saves the Sale

Your shoppers aren’t national, they’re hyper-local. Showing real-time local availability is one of the easiest ways to reduce dead ends.

📈 Automated Alerts = Fewer Fire Drills

When something breaks, your platform should be the first to tell you (not your boss). Automated insights are helping teams course-correct before performance drops.

🎯 Takeaway: It’s Not About Features, It’s About Results.

Top commerce teams aren’t just adopting tools.
They’re asking the smarter questions:

• What’s getting in the shopper’s way — and how do we fix it before it costs us?

• Are we measuring attribution… or just watching it?

• How can we make our data work harder, not just prettier?

🛍️ Retailer Rundown

We’re thrilled to welcome these NEW retail partners into the SmartCommerce network! Are you a retailer that isn’t in the SmartCommerce network yet?

Click here to join. (There’s no cost to you.)